Michigan Democrat Christina Hines pioneered a Washtenaw County restorative justice program that lets defendants accused of home invasion and serious assault seek alternatives to traditional incarceration.
As first assistant prosecutor under Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, Hines helped establish the county’s Restorative Justice Program in 2021. An October 2022 court order formalized the effort, and Hines later described it as the first of its kind in Michigan. Breitbart News reported that the design leaves serious felonies open to case-by-case diversion after charges are filed.
Home invasion and assault with intent to do great bodily harm are not automatically barred. Prosecutors may still steer those defendants into a process built around healing, amends, and root-cause talks rather than a standard path to a cell.
County policy sets three core steps. The person who caused harm must acknowledge it and take responsibility. That person and the person harmed then voluntarily agree on a plan to make amends. Affected parties who want to take part work on the causes of the harm and a plan to keep it from happening again.
Criminal cases can move into the program only after the prosecutor’s office files formal charges. Eligibility is not limited to minor offenses. Serious felonies are reviewed one case at a time.
Hines spelled out the boundaries in a December 2023 Michigan Bar Journal article. She wrote that many adult criminal cases can be referred, with carve-outs she listed herself.
In that piece, Hines stated:
"Many adult criminal cases are referrable, with exceptions for sexual assault, victimization of children, intimate partner violence, and other cases where the prosecutor determines the defendant poses a public safety risk such as homicides or cases involving gun violence,"
Home invasion and assault with intent to do great bodily harm do not appear on that exception list. They remain open to consideration under the same case-by-case standard.
Hines also defined the philosophy behind the program.
She wrote:
"Restorative justice is an approach to address conflict and misconduct that focuses on healing rather than punishment and values accountability over exclusion,"
The October 2022 order did more than green-light diversion after charging. It urged a wider cultural shift inside the county.
The court stated:
"The Court encourages residents of this County to employ restorative justice practices, not only in justiciable matters, but in all aspects of life and law."
That language treats restorative justice as a preferred default, not a narrow tool for low-level disputes. Defendants already charged with serious felonies can still land in the same pipeline if prosecutors approve the referral.
Hines joined the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office shortly after Savit took office in January 2021 and was named first assistant. Savit had campaigned on a progressive criminal justice platform.
Within days, his office eliminated requests for cash bail and became the first jurisdiction in Michigan to adopt that policy. A January 4, 2021 report detailed a 20-page directive telling assistant prosecutors not to request cash bond in any case.
The restorative justice program followed the same year under Hines’s work as first assistant. Together, the two moves reduced traditional custody levers at both the bail stage and the post-charging stage for a wide band of cases.
An October 2021 report noted Hines had six years of experience when she received the first-assistant appointment and moved ahead of several attorneys with considerably more experience.
A September 2021 Washtenaw County Legal News article framed the local push as consistent with programs elsewhere. It pointed to New York City’s Common Justice effort as a “robust restorative-justice program” that has handled serious and violent felonies, including assault and robbery.
The same article said crime survivors in other communities often prefer restorative justice to the traditional criminal legal system. Washtenaw’s design tracks that approach: after charging, selected defendants, including some accused of serious felonies, can be routed into mediated amends instead of a standard sentence track.
Giffords, the gun-control group, later endorsed Hines and said she plans to help “adequately fund similar programs at the national level.” The local experiment was never framed as a one-county pilot with a hard sunset. Its backers treated it as a model worth scaling.
Restorative justice sells itself as victim-centered. A 2012 study of victim-offender mediation found the opposite pattern in the cases it reviewed.
Researchers reported:
"The findings of the current study indicate that these [RJ] principles were compromised in each case to some extent,"
The study described victims who faced marginalization, intimidation, and pressure during mediation. Victim-sensitive practices were the ones most often skipped. Mediators told victims to “keep things positive.” Some victims felt threatened by offenders or their families. Others felt pushed to accept apologies. Preparation was often thin. Mediators applied pressure. Intimidation filled the gaps.
Washtenaw’s written policy still rests on voluntary joint planning between the person who caused harm and the person harmed. When the charged conduct is home invasion or assault aimed at serious injury, that structure places the victim back in a room with the accused under institutional encouragement to reach an amends plan.
Hines’s own exception list covers sexual assault, crimes against children, intimate partner violence, homicide, and gun violence when prosecutors flag a public safety risk. Those categories matter. They do not cover the full range of violent or invasive crime.
A defendant charged with breaking into an occupied home can still be screened for diversion. So can a defendant charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm. The prosecutor’s office keeps discretion. The policy does not impose a categorical bar.
No outcomes data, recidivism, victim satisfaction, or counts of diverted serious felonies, appears in the available record of the program’s design. The architecture is clear even without those numbers: serious felony charges do not by themselves block a restorative track.
Traditional prosecution ends with a verdict, a sentence, and a record. Washtenaw’s model, as Hines described it, elevates healing over punishment and accountability over exclusion. After the state files charges, selected defendants can exit the ordinary custody path if they admit harm, negotiate amends, and join root-cause planning.
The October 2022 court order did not limit that preference to small claims or juvenile matters. It told county residents to use restorative practices in court cases and in “all aspects of life and law.” The prosecutor’s office, under Savit and Hines, supplied the charging-stage gateway that makes the preference operational for adult felony dockets.
Hines’s later writing presented the Washtenaw program as a breakthrough for Michigan. The same writing confirmed that the referral net is wide and that the hard stops are narrower than the list of crimes that frighten ordinary residents, home break-ins and intentional serious assaults among them.
When local officials treat home invasion and serious assault as negotiable entry points for diversion, they tell law-abiding families that custody is optional and that progressive process matters more than swift, certain punishment.
